Frogfishes are fascinating animals. They sit
well camouflaged and without
moving on sponges, wait in front of holes or hide between corals
and wait for their prey to approach. One of its dorsal spine is
converted into a lure (illicium)
with a bait (esca) which looks
like a small fish, a worm or a shrimp. This lure is dangled, flicked
and moved around in front of the Frogfish's head. If a fish wants
to catch this make-believe prey it becomes prey itself - fast as
lightning the Frogfish greatly expands its oral cavity thus creating
suction pressure inside the mouth and engulfs the animal. This behavior
is called aggressive mimicry.
With this kind of luring behavior the frogfish is a very succesfull
predator.

Although like a lot of divers I have started
to use the nickname "Froggie" of course the frogfish is
not exactly a cuddly animal - actually it is not very likable -
but but how it looks and it's behavior is very interesting!

So - enjoy this website, look at the largest collection
of frogfish photos, read about the behavior
of this amazing fish and..... get wet! Those critters are waiting
for you underwater!

IMPORTANT: Based on new findings (reference)
about DNA in frogfishes the nomenclatur for several frogfish species
(all of the former genus Antennarius) was changed and this website
corrected accordingly in 2012.New phylogenetic relationships
between frogfish genera and specieslist of changed
species names / PDF

This website was part of www.starfish.ch
and was launched in October 2008 as a separate site
Diese Webseite war Teil von www.starfish.ch
und wurde im Oktober 2008 als separate Webseite ins Netz gestellt